Low-Energy Air Filters: An Easy Route to Long-Term Savings

It's no secret that buildings require plenty of energy, particularly for their heating, cooling, and air cleaning systems. But for most of us, the numbers will still come as a jolt. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, residential and commercial buildings account for nearly 40 percent of all energy use within the United States. And more than a third of that amount is directly attributable to the HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) systems used to make indoor air comfortable and safe. Those are eye-opening figures. But HVAC energy use is also an area ripe for savings. And as a new whitepaper from Camfil - the world's provider of clean air solutions - shows, those savings can be both significant and easy to achieve.

Camfil's whitepaper, titled "Quick Wins for Energy Savings in Buildings," explores how choosing low energy air filters can optimize both energy consumption and indoor air quality - a win for sustainability, a win for health, and a win for the bottom line. By selecting the proper air filters, building owners and managers - and manufacturers, hotels, schools, hospitals, and other organizations that operate and maintain HVAC systems - can save hundreds of millions of dollars a year while ensuring the health of the occupants of their buildings.

While many organizations are stressing sustainability and energy conservation, optimizing air filters has traditionally not been at the top of their to-do list. Yet as Camfil's paper notes, choosing sub-optimal filters can have costly consequences. Specifically, the use of wrong or energy-hungry air filters can result in unnecessary spending on the order of $40 or more per year per filter. That's because improperly selected filters contribute to air resistance - resulting in more energy being required by the fan motor. Meanwhile, inexpensive air filters often degrade rapidly, requiring more energy to be used to push the air through -- and requiring more frequent replacement.

Camfil Low-energy air filters, on the other hand, can typically reduce HVAC energy consumption by up to 30 percent. Using higher quality materials and more advanced designs, the filters need less energy to push the air through. These filters are able to maintain peak efficiency far longer, too - in Camfil's case, two to three times longer than traditional air filters. That results in less frequent change-outs, and lower replacement and disposal costs. So while sustainable low-energy filters may cost more initially, life-cycle costs - a truer measure of air filter expenses - are significantly lower.

As the whitepaper explains, lifetime costs are comprised of multiple factors: the filter's initial cost, the labor involving in installation and replacement, energy consumption, the cost of cleaning of the ventilation system, and disposal costs. Camfil's unique Life-Cycle Cost (LCC) software can help pinpoint the total expected outlays for different makes and models of air filters.

The payoff in choosing the right air filter can be substantial. Camfil's whitepaper notes that in a typical building containing 20 installed air handling units with 10 filters each, energy savings of more than $23,000 a year can be achieved. And those savings come with no, or minimal, capital outlays. Low-energy air filters can usually be used without any modification to existing HVAC systems. Additional savings include a 50 percent reduction in labor costs, since filters will need to be changed only half as often, and a 50 percent reduction in waste costs, as only half as many filters will require disposal.

Significantly, the savings that low-energy air filters bring are obtained with no sacrifice in performance. Because of their more efficient design, sustainable air filters actually improve indoor air quality, as they do a better job removing harmful particles from the air. In Camfil's case, this is due to the use of fine fiber media, which performs at an extremely high level because the interstitial holes between the fibers are smaller and will trap smaller particles.

To read more about how the right air filter can boost energy efficiency and health, visit [Quick Wins for Energy Savings to download a copy of Camfil's new whitepaper.

The world leader in air filtration systems, Camfil provides clean air solutions for hospitals, hotels, office buildings, educational institutions, and pharmaceutical and biotech companies. We provide the tools to achieve sustainability, maintain high air quality, and reduce airborne infections -- all while lowering total cost of ownership. Camfil customers go green without ever sacrificing performance.